HYPNOSIS FOR CHRONIC PAIN MANAGEMENT

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“If you get rid of the pain before you have answered its questions, you get rid of the self along with it.” –Carl Jung (1875-1971)
Hypnosis is an effective adjunct in alleviating pain.” –National Institute of Health, 1996
Though often denigrated as fakery or wishful thinking, hypnosis has been shown to be a real phenomenon , with a variety of therapeutic uses especially in controlling pain.“-Scientific American, July, 2001
Hypnosis can be used very effectively for pain reduction.  It has taken us a century and a half to rediscover the fact that the mind has something to do with pain and can be a powerful tool in controlling it… It is now abundantly clear that we can retrain the brain to reduce pain.”… “float rather that fight.” -David Spiegel, M.D., Associate Chairman Of Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences,  Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA.

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In 1955 the British Medical Association recognized the benefits of hypnosis as a treatment of different ailments and in the relief of pain.
In 2000, researchers at Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston found that hypnosis reduces pain and surgery time and improves safety. The trial of 241 patients showed that patients who used hypnosis during surgery needed less medication, had more stable vital signs and left the operating room sooner.
A large number of hospitals around the world use hypnosis to reduce pain and discomfort, accelerate healing and to reduce the cost of surgery. Pain relief through hypnosis is also used in burn units in major hospitals.
For managing pain one can use painkilling drugs that are often effective but have side effects, or can use hypnosis. The advantage of hypnosis that it has no side effects at all. 
Because hypnosis is so powerful, dr. Gabor uses hypnotherapy for pain management only when the pain producing condition is diagnosed by a physician. She wants to make sure the pain does not hide any undiagnosed health problem. Pain is the body’s alarm that something is wrong. Pain is a messenger. It reveals resistance to the true, natural self.
With the complementary program for managing pain dr. Gabor has created, clients work on identifying the real root causes of the pain and remove it, or work on the symptom itself (the pain) and reduce its intensity. This powerful program is based on a combination of techniques: Medical Hypnotherapy, Guided Imagery for Healing, Interactive Guided Imagery, Regression Hypnotherapy (Age Regression and Past Life Regression Therapy and Analysis), Suggestion Therapy, NLP and Parts Therapy. Clients also receive hypnotherapy audio recordings for pain management, created during the hypnotherapy sessions, as well as learn self-hypnosis for pain management. This program helps clients activate the inner mechanism of healing and use the power of the mind to heal the body.  Some of the most important goals of hypnotherapy are to help clients return to a feeling of control, have a greater understanding of the mind-body connection, and become aware of the roles the conscious and subconscious thinking and belief systems play in healing and in creating our physiology.
The hypnosis audio recordings created during the hypnotherapy sessions are designed to be played every night before going to sleep. Falling asleep while listening to the recording does not affect the outcome in a negative way, because the subconscious mind never sleeps and will follow the guidance and adopt the suggestions included in the recording.
Throughout the years, dr. Gabor has witnessed amazing results in many of her clients. Hypnosis naturally leads to the production of endorphins, which have been shown to be up to 20 times more effective than morphine.
According to John Krukowski, DCH, “A common use in hospital settings is hypnosis for pre-surgery. Assuming a pre-surgery patient is suffering from significant pain and they are taking medications to control the pain. The mixing of pain medications together with general anesthesia may prove to be life threatening. By seeing a hypnotherapist the patient may be able to reduce or eliminate the pain medication prior to surgery thus reducing the chance of complications in surgery. Waking surgery has been done in operating theaters for patients who are allergic to anesthesia.”
Hypnosis Reduces Pain and Speeds up Recovery from Surgery
“Since 1992, we have used hypnosis routinely in more than 1400 patients undergoing surgery. We found that hypnosis used with patients as an adjunct to conscious sedation and local anesthesia was associated with improved intra-operative patient comfort, and with reduced anxiety, pain, intra-operative requirements for anxiolytic and analgesic drugs, optimal surgical conditions and a faster recovery of the patient. We reported our clinical experience and our fundamental research.” [Hypnosis and its application in surgery] Faymonville ME, Defechereux T, Joris J, Adant JP, Hamoir E, Meurisse M, Service d’Anesthesie-Reanimation, Universite de Liege, Rev Med Liege. 1998 Jul;53(7):414-8.
Studies show that Hypnosis Reduces Frequency and Intensity of Migraines
“Compared the treatment of migraine by hypnosis and self-hypnosis with the treatment of migraine by the drug prochlorperazine (Stemetil). Results show that the number of attacks and the number of people who suffered blinding attacks were significantly lower for the group receiving hypnotherapy than for the group receiving prochlorperazine. For the group on hypnotherapy, these two measures were significantly lower when on hypnotherapy than when on the previous treatment. It is concluded that further trials of hypnotherapy are justified against some other treatment not solely associated with the ingestion of tablets.” [Anderson JA, Basker MA, Dalton R, Migraine and hypnotherapy, International Journal of Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis 1975; 23(1): 48-58.]
Hypnosis Reduces Pain Intensity
“Analysis of the simple-simple main effects, holding both group and condition constant, revealed that application of hypnotic analgesia reduced report of pain intensity significantly more than report of pain unpleasantness.” However, it is also recommended to take the best cbd oil for pain while undergoing the treatment as the process may be faster.
Hypnosis Reduces Pain of Headaches and Anxiety
“The improvement was confirmed by the subjective evaluation data gathered with the use of a questionnaire and by a significant reduction in anxiety scores.” [Melis PM, Rooimans W, Spierings EL, Hoogduin CA, Treatment of chronic tension-type headache with hypnotherapy: a single-blind time controlled study. Headache 1991; 31(10): 686-9.]
Hypnosis Has a Reliable and Significant Impact on Acute and Chronic Pain
Hypnosis has been demonstrated to reduce analogue pain, and studies on the mechanisms of laboratory pain reduction have provided useful applications to clinical populations. Studies showing central nervous system activity during hypnotic procedures offer preliminary information concerning possible physiological mechanisms of hypnotic analgesia. Randomized controlled studies with clinical populations indicate that hypnosis has a reliable and significant impact on acute procedural pain and chronic pain conditions. Methodological issues of this body of research are discussed, as are methods to better integrate hypnosis into comprehensive pain treatment.” [Hypnosis and clinical pain. Patterson DR, Jensen MP, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA USA 98104 Psychol Bull. 2003 Jul;129(4):495-521.]
Hypnosis is a Powerful Tool in Pain Therapy 
“Attempting to elucidate cerebral mechanisms behind hypnotic analgesia, we measured regional cerebral blood flow with positron emission tomography in patients with fibromyalgia, during hypnotically-induced analgesia and resting wakefulness. The patients experienced less pain during hypnosis than at rest. The cerebral blood-flow was bilaterally increased in the orbitofrontal and subcallosial cingulate cortices, the right thalamus, and the left inferior parietal cortex, and was decreased bilaterally in the cingulate cortex. The observed blood-flow pattern supports notions of a multifactorial nature of hypnotic analgesia, with an interplay between cortical and subcortical brain dynamics.” Copyright 1999 European Federation of Chapters of the International Association for the Study of Pain. [Functional anatomy of hypnotic analgesia: a PET study of patients with fibromyalgia. Wik G, Fischer H, Bragee B, Finer B, Fredrikson M, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Karolinska Institute and Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden Eur J Pain. 1999 Mar;3(1):7-12.]

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